XPO Logistics finalizes Con-way acquisition

The roll-up powerhouse third-party logistics provider announced Friday it has officially closed on the purchase of asset-based trucking carrier Con-way Inc., including subsidiary 3PL Menlo Logistics, for $3 billion.    XPO Logistics announced Friday it has officially closed on its $3 billion acquisition of Con-way Inc., an asset-based truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation services provider.
   Con-way’s subsidiaries – LTL carrier Con-way Freight, Con-way Truckload, Con-way Multimodal, and third-party logistics provider Menlo Logistics – have all been rebranded as XPO Logistics.
   Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Con-way brings with it a transportation and logistics network of 582 locations and approximately 30,000 employees serving over 36,000 customers. Analysts estimate the company will pull in $5.7 billion in revenues for the full year in 2015 and expect the transaction to be substantially accretive to XPO’s earnings in the first 12 months.
   The transaction immediately vaults XPO to the second largest LTL provider in North America, as well as expanding the company’s North American truckload transportation division and its global contract logistics, managed transportation and freight brokerage businesses.
  The purchase price for Con-way was based on a cash price of $47.60 per share, representing a premium of approximately 31.6 percent to the closing price of the company’s common stock at the time of the announcement on Sept. 8. Con-way shares have since ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
   In connection the acquisition, XPO entered into a new $1.75 billion term loan credit agreement, the proceeds of which were used, together with cash on hand, to finance a portion of the buyout. XPO also entered into a new $1.0 billion asset-based revolving credit facility, which replaced the company’s existing $415 million asset-based revolving credit facility.
   J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley served as financial advisors to XPO Logistics, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz acted as legal advisor. Citigroup served as financial advisor to Con-way, and Sidley Austin LLP acted as legal advisor.
   “We have an unprecedented opportunity to create value for our customers and investors as a result of the Con-way transaction,” XPO CEO Bradley Jacobs said in a statement. “We’re moving quickly to eliminate redundancies and leverage our scale to better serve our more than 50,000 customers.”
   “We’ll issue new financial targets with our third quarter earnings release on Nov. 4,” he added.
   Headquartered in Greenwich, Conn., XPO Logistics serves more than 50,000 customers with a highly integrated network of over 84,000 employees and 1,469 locations in 32 countries. Following its recent $3.8 billion purchase of iconic French trucking and logistics provider Norbert Dentressangle SA., the company now also has a European base in Lyon, France.
   Learn more about the Con-way acquisition and XPO Logistics’s aggressive growth strategy in the feature story “XPO goes long in LTL” from the October issue of American Shipper.